


Cold On The Inside

by thebiggestashhole



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Allen doesn't realize he's a person, M/M, Mental Patient!Allen, Nurse Tech!Lavi, PTSD Lavi, There's gonna be some weird stuff in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3486800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebiggestashhole/pseuds/thebiggestashhole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allen couldn't remember what it felt like to be human. He couldn't remember anything at all. Could Lavi help him remember what it meant to be something other than the cold he felt deep down in his heart? Or would he melt too, just like every other thing Lavi touched? Amnesia Patient!Allen, Nurse tech!Lavi. Rated for language, Allen's traumatic past, and future romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm reposting this from FF.net, because no way in hell am I still posting anything on there. Sorry to the people who followed it there. This story also might be changing from what I was originally thinking for it, but what story doesn't? Anyways, thanks for reading.

Prologue

There was snow. There was snow everywhere.

It was all he could remember as his body turned to ice, and his grey eyes became dull. There was snow.

He was the snow.

\--

Lavi wearily walked into work, clocking in and entering the changing rooms, shucking out of his clothing and donning the blue scrubs that were his uniform. He was so used to doing the same things, day in and day out, that the routine had his body moving in the mechanical movements that came with repetition. He walked out of the changing room and down the hall, to the reception desk where he grabbed a clipboard. Today he was on pod three, watching the rehab patients. With a sigh, he walked down the hall and put on his game face. Just another day in the loony bin.

\--

He could feel the paper thinness of his skin. He was on fire. He was melting, melting so fast that he could barely hold himself together. You weren't supposed to bring the snow inside, or it would melt. That was something mothers taught their children from a young age, he knew that.

But still, here he was, surrounded by warmth, so hot, so sweltering, that he couldn't breathe. It was as if all the air had been burned out of his lungs, and he couldn't gasp it in fast enough. He was melting, so fast, too fast.

He couldn't keep himself alive for much longer. You weren't supposed to bring the snow inside.


	2. Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's one hell of a Monday for Lavi.

Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs

Allen Walker wasn’t the usual patient. Though, around here, usual was a word not used lightly. In a place that used ‘cuckoo for cocoa puffs’ as a common descriptor, St. Noir’s Order of the mentally compromised was just another drop off box for those inconvenient insane family members. But that wasn’t the case here. Allen Walker, a male of undetermined age, was a patient that had been a resident there far longer than anyone could remember. He was just a facet of the hospital, like crooked door or a cracked step. And for as long as anyone had known, he had always been asleep. Paid for by the state, he rested peacefully in his hospital bed, his heart monitor always a steady tempo, a noise that faded into the background, just like his existence.  
But today was different. 

“Of course today had to be different,” Lavi thought to himself as his usually dull job in pod three was unsettled by the radio call of a code blue, or a cardiac arrest warning. Reading his pager quickly, he swept into room 308, pushing past the other junior aids and techs that had swarmed to the call.  
“Get back, get back. Get out of the way, quickly! No crowding, please!” His voice boomed through the din of the chatter that filled the space, catching the other employees’ attention and effectively moving them to the sides. On the bed in front of him lay the white haired patient that had never moved in the seven years Lavi had worked there.

But today was different. Of course it was.

\--

The clouds were smothering him. It was as if they had come out of the heavens to wrap around his neck, to crawl down his throat and constrict in his chest, to make it impossible for him even to think. He could do nothing but lie helplessly as his own body killed him, starving him for air from the inside out. Panic filled him. The clouds weren’t supposed to hurt him. The clouds were what had brought him down to be here, they were what had given him life. They were just another part of his life, a ceiling to his sedimentary existence.  
How could the clouds hurt the snow?

\---

Lavi quickly took the pulse of the patient before him, feeling nothing. Barking a quick order to the nearest hovering nurse to grab a defibrillator, he began CPR. After a minute and a half with no response, he switched to the defibrillator as soon as it arrived. He ripped off the starched white gown to the side of the boy’s chest, attaching the pads to his chest before charging the AED. As soon as the light flashed at him, he sent a shock through Allen’s chest, waiting, watching, for a breath or even a weak pulse. Nothing. He let the machine charge again, sending another shock. Everyone in the room held their breath, searching for a response. Lavi sent up a silent prayer that the kid wouldn’t die on his watch. But still. There was no response. With a heavy heart, he turned off the defibrillator and the screaming heart monitor. Standing for a moment to check all signs, pupil dilation, lack of breath, and lack of pulse, Lavi sighed.  
“I’m pronouncing him dead. Allen Walker, time of death 3:33.” There was a stunned silence as the news set in. Allen Walker, the resident sleeper case, the inside joke of many as the hospital’s own ‘sleeper cell’, was gone. He was dead. Never to have woken, not even once. He had died the same way he had lived. Asleep.

\--

The darkness was terrifying. He trailed his fingers out into the murkiness of it, feeling it pulse around him, lap at him, as if he were underwater. The warmth of it seeped into his skin, his muscles, even into his bones, as horrifying as the thought was. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.  
He was melting. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

\--

Lavi was barely aware of the passing traffic as he made his way home to his apartment that night. As he parked his beaten up little Mazda in the tenant lot, his mind was preoccupied. It was as if a fog had settled in his mind, and he couldn’t clear it out. He didn’t understand why a single patient’s death had affected him so greatly, when he’d seen so much death before. He found himself absentmindedly stroking the patch that covered his eye, a constant reminder of the short few years he’s spent on a battlefield in some foreign desert, a young war veteran. He had been thankful at the time for his injury, taking away his usefulness in the fight, and numbing him from the heart shattering pain he had witnessed as a daily occurrence. He had been sent home, given a pension, and a notice telling him to find a job. He had put his year of medical training in the field to use, getting a nursing position at a local hospital before they had transferred him to St. Noir’s. Life had been turbulent then, nothing like it had been in the past few years.  
Lavi shook his head, as if to clear away the cobwebs of his past that his memories were forming in his brain. He tried his hardest to not think about what had happened while he was in Iraq; it was a useless walk down an even more hopeless path of shame. He got out of his car, and quickly made his way to the door of his building. His flat was on the third floor, just a quick jaunt up a few flights of stairs on a good day, and a grueling hike on a bad one. Reaching his door, he rummaged around in his pocket for the key, sliding it into the lock and entering the dreary little hovel that was his home. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t really need to be. He slid off his shoes and made his way down the dim hall, to a room at the very end. Inside was a mattress and a lamp. The only decorations were the mounds and mounds of paperbacks that rose up in preposterous stacks that towered far higher than anything else. Fiction and nonfiction alike, titles by author’s young and old, Lavi had read it. Or was in the process of doing so. No matter how difficult the book, how tiny the print, how dim the light from his lamp was, Lavi loved to read. It was the one constant in his life, no matter how old he was or where he happened to be.  
He grabbed a copy off the top of his nearest stack, Walden, one of Thoreau’s works. Transcendentalism. It was heavy stuff, but as he felt his mind getting sucked in to the rambling of one mad man, he soon forgot the other that was haunting his conscience.

\--

He was awake.  
He wasn’t sure how he knew he was awake, or even what being awake was, but he knew. He knew, just like he knew how to form coherent thought, or how to blink his eyes. And he also knew it was dark. An unspeakable fear filled him. He knew he didn’t like the darkness. He tried to move his arms and legs, tried to thrash, tried to escape, but his limbs wouldn’t respond. It was as if they were held down with lead weights, or as if they themselves were the lead weights. He could barely move them, or any of his body. It took all his strength to move even slightly, to shift his body even just a little. But it was that little movement that triggered it. He could hear around him, in a jarring cacophony of shattering glass and clattering metal instruments, and then he was falling. It wasn’t a long fall, but still, his body hitting the floor was the most agonizing thing he had experienced. It was if every one of his nerve endings were on fire. Tears leaked from his eyes, cool on his face, and his sobs were silent.

“What the hell?” He froze as he heard the voice, if that was what it was. Yes, a voice, something that came from a human when they spoke. It was then accompanied by the sharp slap of footsteps on the floor. All while his mind was in shock from the senses he seemed to be experiencing for the first time, though his mind told him that wasn’t right. He couldn’t be experiencing this for the first time, he just couldn’t. He knew what things were, he knew what all these things he had seen and touched and tasted and felt were, but here his body told him differently. This couldn’t be right.  
He was only roused by the sharp and painful feeling hands, roughly yanking down a zipper, the zipper on the body bag he was in. If he could have screamed, he would have. Light, so piercing it blinded him and left his eyes stinging, presented itself. He tried to shut his eyes, but still, the vile light permeated his eyelids and left him weeping silently. The hands that had shoved him into this hellish state ripped away the bag from his body, manhandling him in such a way that made his already on fire nerves shriek in agony. He could only weep harder, his tears flowing down his face so hard that even if he had tried to see, he couldn’t have. 

“Oh my god. You’re alive. You’re alive,” babbled the voice above him, breathy with panic. “What the hell do I do? Oh my god, they’re going to have my ass for having a live on in a bag. I’ve got to call Lavi.” The hands retreated from his body, giving him a moment of almost peace, as the unknown man, as he had identified the voice as male, moved to do something else. 

“Yes, Lavi? Yeah, I need you to come in, right now... He wasn’t dead…” He listened intently as some other voice replied to the man, from somewhere else. He could hear the voice get more and more agitated, though he couldn’t make out the words. “Bloody hell, I don’t know how it happened! I was just making my rounds, and then he sent all the cleaning jars and shit to the floor! I know he was dead when we put him in there. Just get your ass in here, I can’t handle this alone!” The other voice cut off suddenly as there was a sharp slap of something closing, and the other man moved closer to him.  
“What the hell is the world coming to?” the man asked, and he silently agreed. What was happening?

\--

Hurriedly, Lavi pushed a headband on, shoving his unruly red hair out of the way of his one good eye, and slung on his shoes as he ran down the stairs of his building. He hadn’t understood half of Johnny’s phone call, but something was up at the hospital, and he had some serious questions to ask.  
It was only as he pulled into the parking lot, almost stalling out his poor abused car, that it dawned on him. Johnny had said he wasn’t dead. That they’d made a mistake. But that couldn’t have happened. He had confirmed the death, made sure the pulse was gone, even gone back later to double check. He’d made sure it was 100%. He should have been dead. He had been dead.  
So why was Allen Walker alive? 


	3. Dead Boy Walking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That bad Monday Lavi was having? Yeah it's about to get worse. Way worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I should probably just throw this out there that this story is completely un-beta'd, and so there are probably a ton of errors and I'm sorry for that.

Dead Boy Walking

He didn’t understand. He didn’t want to. It was painful and everything hurt and he just wanted to curl up in a ball. But he couldn’t. The hands had moved him to a bed, and had propped him up and stuck a needle in him. Which shouldn’t have hurt, his mind told him, but it did. Everything was agonizing, even blinking his eyes, which had begun to adjust to the light. He couldn’t form coherent thought, couldn’t make them stop, couldn’t even move more than a little before his will crumbled under the mind numbing agony his body seemed to be permanently experiencing. He tried to thrash, but it was a weak gesture, barely even a twitch.  
“Whoa there. Easy, easy. You’re okay.” A voice came from above him, making him flinch imperceptibly. His body felt like it was shaking apart, though the shudders he perceived to be violent were barely tremors. His eyes opened minutely, and in the blazing light, he could make out blobs of color and movement. Red. The red kept coming back to him, stroking and prodding his inflamed skin, mumbling words to itself, and always, always, hovering.  
“Johnny, I need you to get me 15 mg of morphine, we need to get his heart rate down. He’s reacting like an intense burn patient.” A shadow covered him, the red was bending over him. He could feel fingers combing through his…his hair. That’s what it was. It didn’t make sense to him, hair, but he knew what it was.  
“You’re gonna make it through, kid.” Red whispered, and he hoped.

\--

Lavi didn’t know what to feel. He was looking at, prodding, consoling, what had been a dead body hours prior, and before that, a coma case from hell. He could barely believe it was real. That Allen Walker, the boy who had never made a noise, was here, twitching, whimpering, living, even though the signs were miniscule. He was on the edge of shock, he could feel that, and the feeling of hysteria close by was what kept him moving. He had an IV in the kid as soon as he’d come into the room, and was checking his breathing, his heart rate, anything, to make sure that indeed, this wasn’t some bad dream after all. Shaking his head, he looked down at his shaking patient, laying on the bed before him, and made a wish.  
“You’re gonna make it through, kid.” He whispered, and he hoped that some higher power had heard him. Because as today was going, there had to be some god out there, with the animated corpse on the bed in front of him as his proof.  
“Lavi, we gotta tell someone. He was dead hours ago. And now he’s not.” Johnny hissed, his voice filled with the hysteria that Lavi was fighting off.  
“You’re right. You should tell someone.” The voice behind them made both of them jump, and Allen twitched on the bed. Lavi turned to face the man who had come in, his spine stiff.  
“Bloody hell Lavi, what were you thinking? I have this kid’s death certificate sitting on my desk. And he’s definitely not dead.” Reever shook his head, running his hands through his unruly blonde hair, as if that would solve the problem of the undead boy in front of him. Lavi wanted to wrap his hands around Reever’s throat. It wasn’t as if his job was on the line.  
“Don’t you think I’ve noticed that? Don’t you think I’ve been asking myself the same questions about why a kid I certified as dead hours ago is breathing again? I double checked, Reever. I had Johnny check too. He was as dead as they get, had the whole unresponsive corpse thing going for him and everything.” He couldn’t keep the sharp edge out of his voice, even though he knew he’d pay for it later, after talking to his supervisor like that. As it was now, his mind was still consumed with Allen’s presence. Reever sighed, and took a step closer to the bed. Lavi couldn’t help that his spine stiffened further, or that his hands twitched at his sides. Reever checked the boy’s pulse, his breathing, his eyes, everything Lavi had already done. Letting loose an even more suffering sigh, he turned away from Allen, only to let the full weight of his glare land on Lavi.  
“I’ll have to report this. It isn’t going to look good for you, I’m afraid,” Lavi held back all the biting retorts that burned his tongue, and nodded. “I’d even go so far as maybe looking into jobs elsewhere. This little stint with Walker is going to cost you. And as for him,” Reever gestured to the body on the bed, which was now shuddering even more violently, “I’ll ask that you detach him from any and all equipment and move him to the front lobby. You’re free to go home after that.”  
“B-but sir, if you detach him from the IV, how’s he supposed to stay alive?” Lavi couldn’t help his nod, as he’d been wondering the same thing.  
“And who said he’s to stay alive, Mr. Gill? Allen Walker is dead, according to a certain stack of paperwork sitting on my desk. And he’s going to stay that way.” 


	4. Baby It's Cold Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavi's job is at risk, and Johnny's not as much of a pushover as he could be.

Baby It's Cold Outside

“Sir, sir!” Lavi pushed a nurse out of the way, trying to follow Reever’s fast pace back to his office. “Reever! For fuck’s sake, listen to me!” Throwing a hand on the taller man’s shoulder, he slammed him against the wall, and mentally cursed himself when he saw the darkening expression on Reever’s face.

“Mr. Bookman, I’ll ask you this once. Remove your hand, or I’ll call security.” Reever’s tone left no doubt that Lavi had pushed him past his politely bored demeanor. 

“Call security, I don’t care. Just don’t push that kid out into the snow and leave him there. That’s more than inhumane, it’s murder.” Lavi’s fingers dug deeper into the man’s shoulder and his pressure increased, pinning Reever firmly in place. Reever sighed again, a hint of weariness creeping into his face, showing his age.

“Allen Mana Walker has no living family, friends, or contacts. The man who dropped him off twenty two years ago left him here in our care with only a note and a large sum of cash which has been dwindling these last few years. Even if Mr. Walker hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have had a home for much longer. Do you see? I’ve got no choice. I can’t even request his transfer to another hospital, Lavi. He doesn’t even exist. He’s a ghost.” Reever wouldn’t meet his eyes as he said this, staring at the floor wearily.

“That doesn’t mean you can throw him out like trash!” Lavi hissed. 

“Aren’t you listening, kid? I can. I shouldn’t have even taken him in the first place. And whether you like it or not, Allen Walker is being wheeled out those doors right now and isn’t coming back.” Shoving Lavi off, Reever stalked off once more towards his office, leaving the stunned and angry redhead in his wake.

\---

He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand any of it. There were so many voices, so many different colors and lights, and the pain dulled all of them. In the back of his mind, he knew the voices were saying something to him, about him, and that he needed to focus, but he couldn’t. All of the sensations were too much, too strong, and he was still reeling.

“That doesn’t mean you can throw him out like trash!” He heard the angry exclamation and shuddered, the words resonating inside of him.  
Suddenly, hands lifted him roughly from his bed and unceremoniously plopped him into a sitting position, showing his feet onto pedals and his hands onto arm rests.

“Sorry man, I don’t have a choice. Lavi might not need this job, but I do.” A frantic voice whispered into his ear, and he flinched back, the sound startling him. He could feel himself being moved, and the temperature of the air getting cooler. A gust of wind hit his face, and for the first time since finding himself thrust into this stranger world, he felt at peace. The wind. The wind was here. He would be okay.

\---

Lavi’s barely restrained anger came to full force as he saw Walker being wheeled out the front doors, clad in only the customary hospital gown and pants.

“Jesus Christ, these people!” Running after Johnny, ripping his own winter jacket off his shoulders, he bolted out the door.  
“Johnny! God damn it, Johnny, you can’t just push him out here! He’s going to freeze!” He angrily threw his coat over the lightly shivering boy in the wheelchair, and turned on the bespectacled lab tech who seemed to shrink under his gaze.

“H-hey man…I can’t just throw away my job. I’ve got bills to pay, and Tapp to take care of. I’ve waited years to get here, and I’m not gonna give that up.” With each word, Johnny seemed to resolve himself, and he straightened his shoulders and continued pushing Allen Walker further into the parking lot.

“Johnny! Come on man! I know how much Tapp means to you, but are you just going to abandon an innocent kid out here in the cold?” Lavi jogged to keep up with the curly haired man, and then backed away as Johnny whipped around.

“No, Lavi, you don’t understand how much Tapp means to me. You didn’t give up half of your life to watch your best friend go slowly mad. You didn’t watch him unravel at the seams, knowing his mind was going but still trying to keep it together. So don’t try and talk me out of this. If it bothers you so much, take him home with you. You heard Reever, he doesn’t have any family or friends. No one’s going to come looking for him. Allen Walker doesn’t have anyone, and I sure as heck don’t have enough room on my plate for another basket case.” With that, Johnny turned on his heel and left, leaving Lavi and Allen standing out in the cold.


	5. Stare Into The Abyss

It’s not that he was heavy, because he wasn’t. But his very presence was heavy, sitting like a frail little doll on Lavi’s mattress. Lavi had wrapped him in as many blankets as he could find, and had rigged up an IV from a few things he had run into the grocery to get. His eyes were closed, and if it weren’t for the gentle rise and fall of the blankets, Lavi would have thought him dead for the second time. 

“It’s a wonder you aren’t.” Lavi muttered, glancing at the pale face and even paler hair sticking out the top of the blankets. Allen’s hair was so white that it even stood out from the white of the apartment walls, yellowed and stained by age and previous tenants. It was the white that made him different. If it weren’t for the color of his hair, which hadn’t been changed by dyes or bleach, he would have looked like any other sleeping young adult. For having slept away what seemed to be half of his life, Allen wasn’t a bag of bones, which was ridiculous. Lavi knew it wasn’t possible to keep someone alive on IVs and transfusions alone, which was seemingly all Walker had consisted on. He could only shake his head as he went through the sparse notes he had snatched on his way out, a handful of barely filled out medical papers that weren’t even enough to make a basic diagnosis out of. 

“What the hell were these people thinking? Why didn’t they do more?” It took all Lavi had to restrain his anger, frustrated with how little time anyone had given Walker, from the lack of an actual diagnosis, to the fact that no one had even dug into his past, tried to place the patient that had been mysteriously dropped on their doorstep, to see if he existed anywhere, in any system. Though from what Lavi had turned up using his minimal access to the medical database and well, Google, he couldn’t place this kid either. No one was looking for Allen Walker. No one even seemed to know that he had been born, gone missing, and wound up in some psychiatric hospital off in the boonies. He truly was “no one”, according to the system. Sighing, Lavi set down his laptop and looked at the bundle in front of him. Walker hadn’t even opened his eyes, not since they’d first taken him out of the body bag. Lavi had been so busy trying to figure out what was happening he hadn’t even paid attention to the kid’s eyes, but he was curious. Was the boy blind? Had they over stimulated him after his so-called death that he dared not open them?

“Hey. Hey, kid,” prodding did nothing, Walker didn’t even flinch now, “Allen. Allen. Open your eyes for me.” Nothing. He didn’t even make a motion that acknowledged he had heard Lavi.   
“Oh for christ’s sake, open your fucking eyes, you useless beansprout.” Flinching at the harshness in his own voice, Lavi turned away. He knew he shouldn’t have expected a response, but he had hoped. God, he had hoped. Hoped this wasn’t all in vain, that his stupid heroics wouldn’t end with just a corpse on his hands, another death on his conscious. He wasn’t some white knight, riding to the rescue; he was just as broken as the people he tended to. It was seeing them come apart at the seams that kept him sane. It was seeing that there was only one direction to go, further down the rabbit hole, should he ever chose to stop holding on. Maybe Allen Walker had chosen this life, to sleep, and never wake up, and it was his fault that the poor kid was stuck here, breathing, living, even if he hadn’t wanted to.   
_Damnit Lavi, you can’t save them all, if you can’t save yourself._

“Maybe… you don’t have to.” It was faint, but he had heard it. He whipped around, only to catch the end of it. 

“What did you fucking say?” He was across the mattress, his face in Walker’s, he didn’t care, he had to make sure it wasn’t his fucking mind playing tricks on him, not again, not with this. But Allen remained silent, as if he had never moved at all. It was almost as if the words Lavi had heard were carried on the wind, an answer to his thoughts from some ethereal god. 

“I’m going crazy. This is it. I’ve kidnapped some white haired brat, and now I’m hearing voices. This is it. This is the part where they cart me off to the police enforced mental institute.” He knew he was rambling, but it was all he could do to keep himself from truly losing it. He got up and paced the length of the bed, close to punching a wall, smashing his head, anything to clear the crushing fear that was clouding his brain.

_Just gotta keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together. Keepittogetherkeepittogetherkeepittog—_

“But there’s nothing broken.” This time, the voice was accompanied by an action. His eyes. They were open. And for the first time in a long time, someone stared into the eyes of Allen Walker, and he stared back.


	6. Silence Isn't All That Golden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For every step forward that he took forward with Allen, it was a mile backwards the next minute. He might have saved the boy from a mental hospital, but seemingly it was Lavi who was insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for [gestures to all of myself and this fic]. It's been a wild ride and I honestly kind of had no idea what I was doing with this fic anymore, seeing as I started it nearly two years ago and lost my train of thought. But I think I've got my ideas all set now, I know where this is going, and I hope to get more regular updates! So thank you to those of you who've stuck with me, and to those of you who are reading this now!

Silence Isn't All That Golden

_It's too warm. Too warm. Warm is bad. Warm is wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwron--_

**L** avi woke with a start, his heart pounding and a sheen of cold sweat covering his entire body. Once again, his sleep had been disturbed by the fitful thoughts that intruded his head, thoughts that seemingly weren't his own. Groggily, he sat up, calming his breath. He could see the moisture of it in the air before him, and it was then that he noticed it was actually quite cold in his apartment. Wrapping a sheet around his body, he got up to figure out why the heat hadn't kicked in. Drifting out to the living room, he found the thermostat blinking an error message. 

"I don't even want to know how that managed to happen." Shaking his head, he turned to address the open balcony door behind him, the real source of the frigid air. There was a fine dusting of snow on his carpet, growing steadily thicker. With a sigh, he walked to the door, and poked his head outside. Curled on the snow-covered slats of the balcony was Allen, his pale skin and hair nearly blending in with the snow.  
This wasn't the first time Lavi had found him on the porch, especially after he had woken from an especially strange nightmare. The boy hadn't spoken since the very first night Lavi had brought him home. If anything, he seemed to have regressed into himself. Lavi had to fight him to get the boy to eat anything, and more often than not, it ended with Allen on the floor, making a low, haunted crooning. Had his neighbors been the type to snoop or complain, he was sure they would have, but Lavi hadn't even seen his secretive neighbors once. It worked in his favor though, for all of Allen's strange behavior over the past week would have drawn more than its fair share of attention. As he looked down at his feet, he could see the soft rise and fall of Allen's chest under the thin sheet he had stolen off of the couch. His eyelids fluttered, and his face appeared peaceful. Lavi wished he could leave him like this. He was coming to regret taking in the kid. Every moment he spent in the waking world, he seemed to be a frightened shell of a person. Though he said nothing, his posture and expressions clearly telegraphed his fear. For whatever reason, he seemed to not understand basic human interaction. He would eat snow off of the porch, instead of drinking water from the glass Lavi left for him near the sink. He could only be forced to ingest food in small quantities, and after much struggling. He never spoke, but Lavi could swear that when he was awake, it was almost as if a faint, indistinguishable whisper followed him wherever he went. Lavi would find the boy in locked rooms of his apartment, without the lock having ever been turned. The only thing normal about him was that he seemed to be literate. Frustrated beyond belief, Lavi had left the boy in his own room one night, throwing his book down on the bed after another futile attempt to get him to speak again. He had come back a while later, embarrassment and guilt plain on his face, only to find Allen reading his most recent copy of _Good Omens_. He seemed so engrossed in the reading that Lavi just stood in the doorway, amazed. Of all the things he had thought possible, reading hadn't been one of them, especially with how the kid acted. As Lavi watched, Allen almost seemed to fade in and out, drifting in and out of focus like as if through a fog. Lavi shook his head, thinking it a trick of his tired eyes, and Allen noticed the movement, quickly throwing the book away from him, and fearfully backing away. 

"Hey, it's okay. If you want to read something, go ahead. I've got more than enough books for the two of us to share. Who knows how many times I've read all of these, I'm in no rush to read any certain book." He swore, just for a second, that Allen's expression softened, but was quickly replaced by the ever-present all consuming fear once more. After that, he had started to notice more of his books around the house, something he took as at least a small sign of progress. 

As he scooped up Allen's sleeping figure and took him inside, he noticed a battered copy of _Graveyard Book_ , in his hand. Gently, he removed the book, keeping his fingers in it to keep the page that the kid was on. Glancing at it, he remembered the book fondly. It was about a boy raised by a motley crew of ghosts. He slipped it back into Allen's hand, and then wandered back to his bedroom. Grabbing a change of clothes, he made his way to the bathroom. He shut the door behind him, turned the shower on and shucked off his pants, letting the water warm up. It was then that he heard the whimper. Poking his head outside of the bathroom door, he saw nothing, and shook his head. Thinking it was just a figment of his imagination, he nearly slipped and killed himself as he came knee to face with Allen, who was sitting hunched in the tub, the water soaking the loose fitting clothes Lavi had dressed him in. 

"Ffff-fuck! How the he--" Allen's whimpering cut his cursing short, and he quickly moved to turn the water off as the boys whimpers became wails. He grabbed the white haired brat from under the arms and hauled him out of the shower, cursing even more. 

"Jesus Christ kid! Can't a guy fucking shower in peace?!" Lavi ran a hand through his hair and thanked his stars that he hadn't gotten fully undressed yet. Meanwhile, Allen's cries hadn't subsided; if anything, his wailing increased. 

"Calm the fuck down! Quiet! Come on, just--quiet down! It's just water, you'll be fine!" But nothing he said could stop the kid’s sobs. Becoming increasingly panicked and running out of options, he did the only the thing that came to mind: he hugged the kid. Wrapping his arms around the boy, cradling him firmly to his chest, he tried to calm the frantic Allen with gentle "it's okay"s and shushes. Allen's body stiffened in his arms, and for a few seconds, Lavi thought that the boy would fight his embrace, but slowly he calmed under Lavi's soothings. After a while, Lavi attempted to pull back slowly, only to find that Allen's hands were like talons in the fabric of his shirt. Reluctantly, and with some effort, he pried the boy’s hands from his shirt, and let him sit himself upright. His cries had quieted to small sniffles and tears, whatever had set him off seemingly having passed. Lavi let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding, and turned away from Allen. 

_I'm not cut out for this. I have no idea what I'm doing. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? I'm not a parent. I'm not a hero; I'm just some idiot who can't keep his fat nose out of business that it doesn't belong in. Shit. What have I gotten myself into?_

His head in his hands, Lavi just wanted to be anywhere but here. He couldn't even begin to understand what he was supposed to be doing with a kid so obviously messed up as Allen, and he didn't even have the first clue as to where he would find some advice for this. 

"Shit, kid. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?" Allen looked up as he said this, his eyes filling with tears once more.  
"Oh please, please don't keep crying. I don't know what's wrong, and I can't keep fighting you at every turn just because you won't fucking talk to me. I'm not a miracle worker. Hell, I don't even know what I am anymore. After that little stint with you at the institute, I'm definitely not employed, that's for sure. And I can't keep this up. You might be fucking insane, but before you showed up, I was doing okay. Now? Now I'm talking to someone who won't even speak except to answer my thoughts, who shows up in rooms without walking into them, and who was fucking dead three days ago!" Lavi couldn't help the bitter laughter that bubbled up, though what came from his lips was closer to a hysterical sob. He barely flinched when he felt a hand touch his hair, just the slightest touch that he almost wasn't even sure he was feeling anything. If he had looked up thought the curtain of his hair, he would have seen Allen's own face, so close to his, the closest the boy had ever willingly come to him. But instead, Lavi remained how he was, with Allen's hand in his hair, and let his tears fall. 

_My life is crumbling around me, and it's thanks to you, Allen Walker._  


\--

When Lavi had finally looked up, his eyes bloodshot, Allen was gone. Lavi hadn't heard the boy leave, but then again, he hadn't even heard him enter the room in the first place. With that thought haunting his mind, he wearily heaved himself to his feet, finally stripping himself out of the rest of his clothing, damp from his contact with Allen. He turned on the water, and finding the shower miraculously guest-free, he stepped in. But under the warmth of the water, he still couldn't shake the chill that sat on his skin. As if wrapped in a ghostly presence, his skin was cool to the touch, even after standing in the scalding shower. He shook his head, and quickly washed himself, hopes of relaxing dashed.

\--

_**W** arm warm warm so wrong warm!_ His body screamed at him, that something was very wrong, and that he needed to escape. But the place where he found himself was just as bad, as warm water cascaded over his head and soaked the cloth that covered his body. His mind clouded by the panic filling him, he let out a whimper. But the warmness didn't stop. He tried to move again, but his body refused to respond to his wishes, and instead, a thin keening wail escaped from him. Suddenly, the _warm bad wet no_ feeling stopped, and he could feel himself being dragged out of his fetal position and onto drier land. Still, his wailing only got louder, now he was _wet cold bad melting_ and the sensation wouldn't dissipate.

"Calm the fuck down! Quiet! Come on, just--quiet down! It's just water, you'll be fine!" Water? How was it water? Water didn't feel like this, water didn't stick to him with this feeling, the novelty that was _wet_. In all of his years, Allen had never experienced the sensation of water on skin, and it terrified him. His cries were a reflex, like that of an infant who could only express its fear through its own chorus of wailing. Just as his body seemed to begin to go into shock from the feeling, something new happened. The red man touched him. It wasn't the first time he had touched Allen; they had come in contact many times, when the red man had tried putting food in his mouth, or forcing him to drink, or when his fingers brushed Allen's skin when he covered his sleeping form with a blanket. No, this was not the first time, but the way his arms wrapped around the boy, the way he whispered soothing nonsense into his ear, caused something in the depths of Allen's memory to dislodge itself. A memory of a different time, a different person, but the same strong embrace and soothing words as he cried. 

_"It will be okay, Allen. You mustn't cry. It will be okay, you'll see. Hush now, for we don't have much time."_

_"But why? Why can't you stay longer?" His voice had been higher, younger, and it seemed odd to him that he had spoken._

_"Nothing lasts forever, Allen. Including myself. Ah--the time has come. I must say farewell. May we meet again in the next life, my dear boy. Goodbye, Allen Walker."  
He could remember how his body had shook with the sobs that wracked it, almost as if they would break his tiny form. The arms that had held him vanished, leaving him colder than he had ever felt before. He thought he had been used to the cold, but this was something different. This was coldness inside of him, a kind of cold that made his chest hurt and his breath come in ragged gasps. _

_I remember now. I remember._

As the last of the memory faded, he found himself clinging desperately to the red man, his fingers knotted into the cloth of the man's shirt. It was only when the man tried to pull away did he realize that he didn't want him to go. But he forced himself to let the man leave, as he crawled across the floor to sit away from Allen. As he turned away, he let out a deep sigh, and Allen could sense the panic that was filling him. 

"Shit, kid. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?" Allen couldn’t help the tears that welled up in his eyes, try as he might. There was something in the way that the red man said the words that made him think of being abandoned. He didn’t want this man to leave, he didn’t want to be alone, alone was bad, alone was—

"Oh please, please don't keep crying. I don't know what's wrong, and I can't keep fighting you at every turn, just because you won't fucking talk to me. I'm not a miracle worker. Hell, I don't even know what I am anymore. After that little stint with you at the institute, I'm definitely not employed, that's for sure. And I can't keep this up. You might be fucking insane, but before you showed up I was doing okay. Now? Now I'm talking to someone who won't even speak except to answer my thoughts, who shows up in rooms without walking into them, and who was fucking dead three days ago!" With his outburst over with, the red man seemed to fray around the edges. His sad laughter turned to sobs, and Allen knew. He knew that somewhere deep down, this man was the same as him. Though he couldn’t remember why just yet, he knew. 

Tentatively, he put his hand out, gently stroking the red man’s hair, a gesture that somewhere in his foggy memory he knew to be comforting. It was only the faintest of touches, but some part of him hoped it to be enough.

_It’s okay. You don’t have to be alone._

\---

It wasn’t until much later, once Lavi had finished showering, that he noticed it. Covering the bottles in the corner of the shower was a thin layer of ice, in the exact shape of a body. Right where Allen had been.


End file.
